![[Used] WD Ultrastar HC550 16TB 3.5″ Enterprise SATA HDD WUH721816ALE6L4 $268 Delivered @ East Digital](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/50/899550.jpg?h=358851e1)
Slightly cheaper than the Metrocom @ Amazon Big Smile Sale (and probably better packaging than Amazon too, based on comments from previous deals of East Digital)
[Used] WD Ultrastar HC550 16TB 3.5″ Enterprise SATA HDD WUH721816ALE6L4 $268 Delivered @ East Digital
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zellenal on 28/03/2025 - 10:02 east-digital.myshopify.com (1666 clicks)
Last edited 28/03/2025 - 13:56 by 3 other users
Last edited 28/03/2025 - 13:56 by 3 other users
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Ah perfect as this is at the top of comments, because I asked and everyone should know before buying.
Verbatim from their mail: “ Approximately 30000 to 40000 hours of power on time”
So 3.5 to 4.5 years.
Meaning END OF LIFE
I would strongly advise against these as the maximum expected life is 5 to maybe 7 years if lucky for these drives.
I also asked “ Are they all 100% SMART data also please?” — No reply to that question.
Do with this info what you will…
Sorry OP, nothing against you. These might be fine if you are okay taking the risk, in a raid config with none important data and you are okay replacing them soon, but that’s a long list of caveats for the price imho.
Also east digital has been great otherwise, I bought from them in the past and recently too. So nothing against them either.
Interesting the 14tb mentions 100% health and the 16tb does not. Not familiar enough with their site to know if that's an oversight or not.
Yeah, gotta be careful. May or may not be an indicator. Again depends on the risk appetite.
Also I can’t edit my comment because you replied but: Adding further to this, I’d suggest their “Factory Refurbished” drives. They say it’s “0 on hours”, make no mistake they are all server pulls, they just wipe their smart data. But those are really clean pulls with less on hours then their “Used” counterparts I believe and expected use -this is based on hearsay- 10k to 20k max on those. I personally have been running some of those for the last year or so, been totally fine.
@Larsson: Not sure if you noticed, but only Seagates are listed as 'Factory Recertified' i.e. they can be wiped.
It's just a label differentiating WD/Dell rebrands, and really doesn't mean what you're making it out to. Your hearsay is wrong.
Last lot of HC550's I bought from East Digital were 14,000 hrs so the hours quoted in the email are conservative, and definitely not end of life - Backblaze shows that the bathtub curve has stretched out to 6+ years for drives.
@Larsson: What are you basing your claim of "END OF LIFE" on? MTBF for these drives is 2,500,000 hours, 40000hrs is 1.6% of their life. Are you a hard drive whisperer or making things up?
@Doge: Hmm, something is not right there - a MTBF of 2,500,000 hours is 285 years. I struggle to believe that could be real.
@iDroid: MTBF is more or less just marketing BS when it comes to individual drives. What that number means is that if you have 285 drives in a data centre you can expect 1 to fail every year. Longevity for any individual drive is not going to be 285 years.
@DigitalAnalog: End of Life is a weird reference to be using with IT equipment. That's always been used in reference to sales and support cycles rather than expected working life.
@DigitalAnalog: From Seagate "Historically, the field MTBF, which includes all returns regardless of cause, is typically 50-60% of projected MTBF". Ok then 140 years is the average life? https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/kb/hard-disk-drive-rel…
I don't particularly believe in MTBF but I'm going to need a source/evidence/article for "END OF LIFE"
These are extremely high quality enterprise grade drives made by Hitachi, not some Thailand Flood Damaged Seagates from 2007.
MTBF for these drives is 2,500,000 hours, 40000hrs is 1.6% of their life
@Doge that's not how MTBF works.
A 2500000 hour rating, means that you'll average a failure from a batch of drives after that many drive hours.
ie if you have 1000 drives in a data centre, you will average a failure every 2500 hours - or once every ~100 days - because running 1000 drives for 2500 hours gives you your 2,500,000 hours of drive use.
If 1000 Ozbargainers buy drives from this deal, on average one drive will fail every 100 days. If you bought 10 drives yourself, then there's a 1% chance that one of your drives will fail in 100 days. Which is roughly a 3.5% chance each year - and so if you run your 10 drives for 5 years, you're looking at a ~17% chance that one of your 10 drives dies in that 5 year period. You've run your 10 drives for a total of 438,000 hours over that 5 year period - which is just under a fifth of the 2,500,000 MTBF.
😎
@Doge: Are you implying that these drives can run for 2,500,000 hours non stop, or 285 years of continuous running? Clearly there has NEVER been a drive that has run for 285 years continuously. MTBF does not mean that a single drive will run for that long without failure. LOL
Yeah, I agree—hard drives store important stuff, so better to play it safe. Not worth saving a bit of money if you end up losing all your data
Well not really what I was trying to say. On a raidz2 array that you use to store replaceable data like movies that you have the hard copies on or you know… can get from the internet anytime by certain means, these are perfectly fine.
More like, these don’t have enough potential life in them to justify the near “rectified” level cost, in my opinion.
It’s a very personal calculation.
Yes, they are now selling WD used and not Seagate. Perhaps because the wiped Seagate SMART data has a bypass to see the real drive stats, not the fiddled one.
WD has no such feature as far as I know.
Ensure your external enclosure can handle large capacity hdds as most don't.
So do these work well in a NAS?
Yep I have 3 in mine
What was the usage details when you got yours? Am tempted to grab some for a second Nas (current one has Exo ls 16TB from ED already).
I have 5 of these in mine; usage was between 2 and 3 years, with 1 power off cycle per month.
@MasterScythe: Yup same
16TB Drive 1 - 24707 hours (2yrs)
16TB Drive 2 - 27890 hours (3yrs)Had them for about 6 months now
@MasterScythe: Is it better to keep nas on forever? Or once a month?, or once a day ?(midnight to morning when we asleep)
I bought two of this same drive from East Digital in January. They came very well packaged, an inch of foam on every side and between the two drives. I was so impressed I kept the packaging.
Unfortunately the courier left it in front of my neighbour's house who I hadn't met, who was kind enough to bring it to me. That's not a negative on this seller though.
SMART was clean. Power_On_Hours was 31612 & 31611 with 13 & 16 Power_Cycle_Count each.
I tested them thoroughly, writing then reading every part of the drive four times with Badblocks. The entire process of testing took about 8 days. They had no problem.
I've got them running in a ZFS mirror. Hopefully if one fails I can replace it before a second failure. But the system is just a backup anyway, so I'm not too worried. East Digital offered a three year warranty so I hope if I get an early failure I can get a replacement.
I was really happy I took the gamble on the price, able to get the two drives I needed for the price of one new drive. They've been running for about two months now backing up my media and seeding private torrents.
I ordered from their eBay store because I felt I'd have more recourse if something went wrong. Their listings on eBay say 3 year warranty. The one linked above to myshopify says 1 year warranty.
@doug89: I found ED good for warranty. Replacement was swift. Although if no stock, they offer a refund (which depending on when you buy may or may not be the equivalent price at time of failiure).
Also considering for a NAS.
Cheap. One year warranty is a bit meh but for the savings it's good. I've used ED and their packaging is amazingly good. Extremely well packaged probably better than anything I've received from anyone ever.
Can vouch ED packaging is amongst the best and fast delivery to boot, so a bit strange and disappointing that they're allegedly wiping SMART data and hiding actual power on hours and other stats on the stuff they sell.
I bought 2x Seagate 12TB from an OzB posted deal last year, supposedly 0 hours server pull. Been working well, no complaints thus far but the 0 hours is suss given what's come to light recently.
does anybody know if buying from East Digital carries a international transaction fee?
They are. But is that relevant, when the storefront is local and charged in AUD?
I've never seen a charge before using Paypal.
It depends on where the payment processor is located.
Sometimes there are stores with AUD prices and a
.com.auaddress and you still get international transaction fees.For East Digital, they do have international transaction fee.
Yes I can confirm that a foreign transaction fee was charged on my East Digital purchase with an Aust CC card and the amount shown at the PayPal checkout being in AUD.
Thanks OP. It'll my first time buying from them so wondering if they are based in Australia?, since they used AUD in their pricing.
Hong kong.
They use shopify.
Long history on ozbargain.
The 2 16TBs I got from them were factory recert but basically 0 hours/came out clean from all the tests and have been running perfectly fine for the last few months, ymmv.
They pack really safely.
how long did they take to deliver?
3-5 days to Melbourne
Faster than a full format
They are server pulls and have been firmware wiped, they almost certainly have around 20,000hrs on them, each.
But will probably be fine, if they lasted that long they are solid.
I will probably buy one myself.
I bought a server pull off them a few months ago and it wasn't wiped. Had just under 20,000hrs on it and it was also a WD Ultrastar HC550 16TB but it was $235 back then so it seems they have increased their prices.
@Dejy: They have indeed increased the prices.
I have 5 in my server and have purchased about 12 or so over the last 2 years; none of them have been wiped and have had roughly 18k hours, so similar enough.
@Dejy: Mate, that’s what I am trying to explain up the top in my comment.
What’s listed under “Server Pulls” are either WD drives, which I believe they can’t change the smart data? or drives that are almost end of life.
What’s listed “factory refurbished” are also server pulls despite being 0 on hours.
So yes, if you buy “server pulls” smart data won’t be deleted. Smart data wiping seems to be a Seagate issue, which seagate opened an investigation on.
@Larsson: I enjoyed our chat in the other thread; and everything you've said is right bar one thing - Thats nowhere near end of life.
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library…
2.5M hours MTBF, rated for 24/7 load.His drives, like mine, are somewhere between 15k and 25k hours, they're young.
You might perhaps mean end of lifecycle which would be the timeframe a specific company uses to refresh their hardware, but they're nowhere near end of life.@DigitalAnalog: You're correct; but it's a good indication though, when we have the AFR also.
https://www.cui.com/blog/mtbf-reliability-and-life-expectanc…Since we also know the Annualized Failure Rate (0.35%), the math beceomes pretty easy.
You can also tweak you expecataions based on your accpetable Error rate (1 in 10pwr15 on this device), and your annual Load/Unload cycles (600,000 rated)My general statement stands; all the drives I've gotten historically from them, are very 'young'.
Weakest part of these HDD's is the read head; which also has the lowest rating: 600'000 loads.
If we assume a GIGANTIC home user load of 50'000 cycles per year, that's still 12 years.
so for about 1000 bucks 4 of these drives you can get about 64TB of storage in a nas thats very good value.
ideally if u have 64tb you would want some redundancy. probs raid 10 which in the end only gives u about 32tb
That's risky data business, but depends on what you store on it and if you really value the data you put on it. If data is replaceable, then you can go ahead without raid redundancy.
I'm assuming everybody here knows, but don't be surprised if you see the actual useable data is not equal to 64TB but less (/1.024).yep if its just for movies you want to watch though from a say a riped blu ray collection you tend to note care about the data on it :D but I know what you mean.
I don't know if that's accurate any more. I may have paid $0 for the content, but the shear amount of time, effort & bandwidth is epic.
@Ulysses31: Yeah, I’ve spent dozens of hours correctly tagging all my music files and getting the artwork.
Better off with 5 or 6 in a RaidZ2.
I'd been sitting on the fence about the 14TB. The 14 is still cheaper per/TB, but not by much. The HC550 and HC530 are both CMR drives, almost identical specs from what I can see on the datasheets.
Model TB Price $/TB Link HC550 18 $324.00 $18.00 https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/wd-ultrastar-dc-hc550-18tb-sata-3-5-enterprise-hdd-wuh721818ale6l4-0f38467-hdd HC550 16 $268.00 $16.75 https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/wd-wuh721816ale6l4-16tb-sata-ultrastar-dc-hc550-3-5-lff-enterprise-hard-drive HC530 14 $225.00 $16.07 https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/wd-ultrastar-wuh721414ale6l4-14tb-sata-hc530-lff-0f31284-enterprise-hard-drive Depends on your use case. If you are a data hoarder or use Plex, then go larger. Across 4 drives its an extra $160. I opted for 14TB drives and regret it and want more.
I've heard similar explanations from others regarding everything, from spotlights for the 4WD to the rating of power tools. No one ever said "damn, I wish I went smaller"
How about a good entry level raid box to go with them? I'd be happy to fully mirror a drive keeping a third as a replacement.
Mirror in the same enclosure isn't really redundancy.
Surely it has to be better than any raid.
I'm considering the same at the moment and I think it depends on what your storage requirements are, how many drives you can accommodate and your risk tolerance regarding redundancy.
I'm probably grabbing 5x14 over 4x16 for the extra 10TB usable space with 2 drive redundancy.
Drive Count Raw Cap. (TB) Total Cost (AUD) Stripe (Usable / Cost per TB) Mirror (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ1 (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ2 (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ3 (Usable / Cost per TB) 1 16 268 16 / 16.75 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2 32 536 32 / 16.75 16 / 33.50 N/A N/A N/A 3 48 804 48 / 16.75 16 / 50.25 32 / 25.13 N/A N/A 4 64 1072 64 / 16.75 32 / 33.50 48 / 22.33 32 / 33.50 N/A 5 80 1340 80 / 16.75 32 / 41.88 64 / 20.94 48 / 27.92 32 / 41.88 6 96 1608 96 / 16.75 48 / 33.50 80 / 20.10 64 / 25.13 48 / 33.50 7 112 1876 112 / 16.75 48 / 39.08 96 / 19.54 80 / 23.45 64 / 29.31 8 128 2144 128 / 16.75 64 / 33.50 112 / 19.14 96 / 22.33 80 / 26.80 Drive Count Raw Cap. (TB) Total Cost (AUD) Stripe (Usable / Cost per TB) Mirror (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ1 (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ2 (Usable / Cost per TB) RAIDZ3 (Usable / Cost per TB) 1 14 225 14 / 16.07 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2 28 450 28 / 16.07 14 / 32.14 N/A N/A N/A 3 42 675 42 / 16.07 14 / 48.21 28 / 24.11 N/A N/A 4 56 900 56 / 16.07 28 / 32.14 42 / 21.43 28 / 32.14 N/A 5 70 1125 70 / 16.07 28 / 40.18 56 / 20.09 42 / 26.79 28 / 40.18 6 84 1350 84 / 16.07 42 / 32.14 70 / 19.29 56 / 24.11 42 / 32.14 7 98 1575 98 / 16.07 42 / 37.50 84 / 18.75 70 / 22.50 56 / 28.13 8 112 1800 112 / 16.07 56 / 32.14 98 / 18.37 84 / 21.43 70 / 25.71 I'm in a very different boat lol. I'm using a NUC with USB drives, 12TB and 4TB, total 16TB combined in Drivepool (waiting on a good deal for a 4/5 bay usb3.2 or Thunderbolt DAS).
Probably just grab a 14TB to add some extra storage. I've got any important data replicated across multiple drives and other backups, but the bulk of my storage is media that could be easily and automatically restored from online sources over a few days. Yay for fibre.
Why do people buy used harddrives? Isn't that just asking for trouble, and hassles to exchange/refund if they die early?
Cost, it retails for more than double this price.
This is very different from buying used hard drives on gumtree/Facebook. These are generally server grade drives to begin with, properly cared for in a data centre, not rolling around in someone's backpack.
Also, hard drives have a significant early failure rate. Get past that and they're likely to last reliably for a few more years. In this case, the early failures are already filtered out.
Check out this link for the failure curves:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/drive-failure-over-time-the-b….It's the bathtub curve that gives me some pause…
Reliability mostly.
Most companies are on 3 year refresh cycles for hardware, and these drives have a warranty period of 5 years; not that you can use the warranty, but its their absolute minimum expected lifecycle.
If you look at the RMA rates on HDD's they greatly drop after 1 year of use, and almost halt entirely after 2 years.So it's like buying a 'demo' car, if you're not hung up on the fact that someone has used it, you get a device with guaranteed no DOA, and a reduced risk of faults.
I've heard people argue that 'you don't know how it was used'… It's a HDD… it was probably used as a HDD….. and even if it was 'mined' on, these are enterprise drives, designed and rated for 24/7 use like that. Not to mention some large databases are genuinely harsher than mining.
Just RAID5/6/z1/z2 them, it protects against failure and keeps your expenditure low ;)
Be careful with those RAID types.
While theoretically it can sustain failure of one (or more, depending on the type ) of HDD in the array, in reality, when the RAID consist of older drives and one of the drives fails, the load on the other disks during restoring often kills them. Meaning you not just loosing the data but also the disks.
Agree. RAID is not backup.
Hard drives die, they're basically a consumable. Take the lowest cost/tB with decent warranty and run with it.
People hoarding data run these 24/7 and expect them to die, they're not using them on an external enclosure and leaving them in the bookshelf hoping it'd last 10 years.
I have one of these SATA docks, it’s great. It’s a cheap disk station, poor man’s NAS.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Wavlink-External-Docking-Station-F…
Any reason these industrial drives will have a problem with it, can’t see why.
I got one too! The old model though.
Your results may vary. I’ve bought 20 drives from ED as factory re-certified and 4 failed on me within the first 1000 hours. You eventually get your replacement drives, but you really have to push and nag to get anything moving. They do supply the label, too, so that’s nice.
I purchased 8 in a group buy 2 years ago. I've had 5 failures. No issues with replacements, but it's still a pain. Run at least 2 parity drives if you wish to gamble with these.
damn, these failure rates dont sound good at all.
I'm tempted to buy one of these to have as a spare after one of my 16TB's died after a couple of months, had to convince them to replace it instead of refund.
I imagine the price would have pumped in that time for them to suggest a refund?
I bought 5x WD 18tb about 2 years ago from them, I had 1 DOA which they replaced and since then no failures. They run 24/7 in a plex server.
I'd be a bit weary of buying used enterprise drives
One one hand they're proven and unlikely to have defects from the factory, on the other hand they'll likely have 10s of thousands of hours on them. Likely powered on 24/7 since new, which could be ~5 years?
Just bought two of the 14 TB disks cos my NAS is running low on space. I’ll see how they go.
What % is considered low capacity for nas? Like 90% full?
Please be aware these seem to only have 1 year warranty.
From memory the previous pulled drives I bought from this store had 3 years warranty now they only have 1 year warranty so possible the age or the amount of returns have lowered the warranty.
This might mean that it's now better value to buy the Factory recertified just so you have that 3 years of warranty for peice of mind.
The drives I bought in January from their eBay store had 3 years warranty. The same drive as above currently listed on their eBay for approximately $40 more still say 3 year warranty in the description.
I wonder why. Maybe they haven't updated their eBay descriptions yet?
From memory the previous pulled drives I bought from this store had 3 years warranty now they only have 1 year warranty so possible the age or the amount of returns have lowered the warranty.
Yeah they lowered it from 3 to 1 year on the 27th of Feb.
I mean uhh, I'm totally not monitoring the site.
Half the price of new.
I'd suggest the person getting the bargain is the person who buys it new and then gets half their money back 5 years laterOrdered one of the 14TB drives to see how loud it is, if good, will order a few more. Fingers crossed. 6 of these puppies in a new Aoostar WTR Max NAS (soon to be released) would be great!
Thought this was a bloodbag at first glance
I saw exactly the same thing!
I am looking to buy 2 of these for my Synology 918+. What programs do you guys use to see how many hours it has been used, etc.?
CrystalDiskInfo will give you the stats (SMART info).
cool, thanks.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/16384278/redir
The 2 16TBs I got from them were factory recert but basically 0 hours/came out clean from all the tests
Are people mixing manufacturers at home these days for RAID sets to reduce the risk of a bad batch or type of drive?
Yes, always. Though probably less of a concern buying used/refurb than buying new as they've already passed that early failure phase. But it's a cheap way to reduce risk.
its showing $274 for me. is there some promo code required?
Yeah , it's showing $274 for me as well
I think price has gone up. Showing $274 for me too.
I bought 4 of the HC550 18TB from east digital and a nas from scorptec on Saturday before last
Shipped by fedex from china or HK, received around the thursday. Scorptec finally shipped the nas on the Friday.
Surface tests (write / read) clean for 2 and the third one is finishing tonight (48 hours ish).
Hours show at about 3 years
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whats the expected usage of these and would this be fine to put in a external enclosure?